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I see two primary ways to approach this, depending on the travel. (TL;DR at the end)
Travelling through civilized lands
From your description, it seems like your players (who are, considering you are playing D&D4e, are basically powerful heroes) are travelling between two cities in a civilized nation. In this case, I'm not even sure if I'd run any kind ...

In Pathfinder, you take actions on your turn. Normally, everyone gets a turn in each round. So in a one-on-one situation, you will take a turn, and your opponent will take a turn, and both together make up a single round. You will get ten turns before the spell expires, one in each round. You’d get the same ten turns in the ten-man brawl; everyone gets one ...

Game time calendar
Our group solves the exact problem you are describing using a game time calendar. This is essentially exactly what it sounds like: a table listing dates in a column, with checkboxes next to them on which we can mark the passing of days. We also left some space for short notes.
We used this extensively in a very long sandbox like fantasy ...

Wish removes it by making it not happen when you leave
The effect referred to is discovering that time has passed at a different rate while you were gone. Wish can be used to remove the effect of time passing at a different rate while in the Feywild — it doesn't remove the effect when it isn't affecting the creatures, after they've left the Feywild. Once ...

Playing short form requires several shifts in technique and approach. My group typically does 2-3 hour sessions. A 4 hour session is a marathon for us.
Drop the Filler
The first thing to do is let go of filler material. Filler material includes setting up adventures that are "clue to clue to clue to oh actually interesting development". This is the ...

TL;DR: Skip random encounters, make encounters during travel meaningful for the story.
Travel, as any other part of game you play out, should have a purpose. Actually, it should have several purposes: Involve the players, let the characters shine, move the story forward, add to the world.
If all you'd do with traveling is get to a new place where the ...

Gantt Charts
I've been spending a lot of time solving the problem of "what ELSE is happening?", and settled on the Gantt chart method. I can map out what is happening in parallel timeframes, dependencies, sequences, and triggers. During the game, I get access to the master chart (PDF copy, for instance) and simply make manual updates in pencil mid-game. ...

To add to fgysin's answer, if your campaign takes place over longer scales, with travel taking e.g. weeks, quad paper becomes useful:
In this case you'd use either a separate sheet, the other side of the paper or the right half for notes. Cross over days that go past with nothing significant happening, but use a number for notes if something is important:
...

The problem with introducing a real world timer, in my opinion, is that the characters most likely know more about how to handle such situations than the your players do (well, unless your players are professional negotiators and/or SWAT people.)
In my experience it's quite natural for players to discuss strategy and tactics, especially in critical ...

Yes, I do this kind of thing all the time in my supers games.
I usually go with the first option; decide how long they have, then convert that into a game-measurable limit (the system I use calls them "panels"), but then if my players start getting bogged down in tactics I cut them off and say "Uh, guys? Clock's ticking, here."
It helps that they rarely ...

Different flows of time can effectively happen in your D&D game, across a portal between two planes or across the surface of a Planar Shepard character's bubble.
What really happens at the boundary is never specified by the rules. The most common interpretation you can find on forums is that a creature can either be at one side or the other, because ...

Just use combat rounds
This battle is against time. Have characters roll initiative and proceed in order, describing their actions according to the chart Actions in Combat. It's perfectly acceptable to explain to the players beforehand that this is not a combat encounter and that you're using combat mechanics to simulate a ticking clock, especially if ...

1 Simple task = 15 mins/ .25hours & 1 complex task = 1 hour
Crafting, training, and other more long term tasks are handled fairly well in the books with concrete requirements and values given for making a magic item or learning a new tool proficiency. The rules however fail to cover everything that happens between those 6 second combat rounds and the ...

All of the above, and then some.
I believe the intent of the "Wish" addendum is actually that it be cast before or during the excursion to the Feywild causing the time to pass at the same rate for those individuals. The metaphysics of that only happening for a handful of people screws with my head a bit but it seems to be the least complicated mechanical ...

Addressing this as a "What should I do?" instead of as "round limit or real-time limit", I think you might be looking at this the wrong way. Consider what SWAT teams (and other such organizations) do during a hostage situation. The essential problem with hostage situations is that its assumed that under ordinary breach circumstances the hostage takers (HTs) ...

Presuming a single "canonical" timeline, with alterations to that timeline always having had been true, the language you're looking for can be found in the Continuum role playing game.
You can get a sample glossary, sans philosophy, at the Continuum glossary.
Of particular import are the concepts of "up/down." and "age/yet". Therefore, "Down [in the ...

You need to go back and read the basic rules in The Combat Round and Actions In Combat. How time and actions work in Pathfinder isn't simple enough to fully explain in a RPG.SE answer.
The key is to divorce talk of "actions" - specific things your character does - from "rounds" and "turns." You can take multiple actions on your turn (like a standard and a ...

The way I read it, the wish spell makes time pass at the same rate. So 4 years in the Feywild equals 4 years in their regular realm. So the question is, does the party know at which rate time is going compared to theirs in the Feywild? After all, I wouldn't change it if I gained a huge amount of exp and got to go back to my regular life after only a little ...

There are a number of disciplines that use timelines, not just RPGs. As a result, there are a number of tools for tracking them. While I was already aware of Aeon Timeline, it is OSX-only as well as commercial software. While we are used to investing in our hobby, I thought I should see if I could find some more options.
This blog post brought a number of ...

I believe the easiest way to manage this in a way that is intuitive to both you and the players and that doesn't force you to keep a log book of minutes and seconds is this:
Draw a circle and color the top half yellow and the bottom half blue. Label the left side morning and the right side evening. Noon is obviously straight up and midnight straight down ...

Another idea that can sometimes apply, but perhaps not in this case, is to set up a tight deadline.
If your party has only 16 days to get from Alpha to Beta before something happens (obviously not "you lose" but rather "things get more interesting"), then you could show them on the map that the safe route from city to city along patrolled roads takes 20. ...

An influx of wealth into a city, combined with fancy new defenses and fortifications? Sounds like time for some militaristic political intrigue!
Two things I think would take off in a town that is pumped up like that.
Thieves
A new influx of wealth means more people coming to take that wealth. Word can spread in a month about the tiny ship building ...

A few quick suggestions:
Keeping tabs on everything that happened
This should be trivial. First, send out an email recap day of game. Second, spend literally five minutes where someone gives a "Last time we played" recap. Others should feel free to chime in, but this should still take no more than a few minutes. Remember - last session was short too, so ...

There's a couple of dials you can turn that create different experiences for travel.
"Are we sick of each other yet?"
First, it's worth noting whether this is something your group even wants in their game at all. Most of us like to play action-adventure RPGs and don't particularly care to endure mundane drama as part of our escapism. Talk to your group ...

If you are looking at the timeline from 1st to 5th edition, then it is a timespan of about 132 years.
1st edition was set in 1357 DR, while 5th edition (The Sundering) is placed at 1484 DR, and the Adventurers League play starts in 1489 DR.
This places it in line with the Phandelver, since Hotenow erupted in 1451 DR.
Numbers taken from ...

What about turning travel time into a puzzle or a "game-within-a-game" to add a little danger and fun to the journey? The hallmark of a fun game is problem solving and having to make difficult decisions.
Without refering to specific landmarks that lie between Neverwinter and Cormyr (I don't have a map of Faerun handy), here are a few examples:
Min/max ...

A simple time tracker may be what you need. I use this method in my Dungeons & Dragons games and it helps immensely. Basically, you take a sheet of grid paper and make a list of the different time intervals that you use within the game. For D&D (v3.5) it is ROUNDS, MINUTES, TURNS (this is a holdover from earlier editions that I use, but is not ...

I find one simple techneque, that alone is not enough to solve all your problems,
but may be getting the "Low Hanging Fruits" is:
Keep a file in a common group accessible place.
I like facebook, but there are plenty of others
In this file write down:
A session title
Eg "A Unexpected Guest"
This acts to jog your and everyone elses memory
Player XP ...

Why not both?
I'd go with a hybrid of your two ideas for this scenario. The PCs only have so many rounds to complete their mission. The players are only allowed so many minutes per round to discuss strategy. This way you still get the sense of immediacy that you are looking for in game, while also preventing the game from getting too bogged down.
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